Stiglitz – Has Trump Captured the Fed?

Has Trump Captured the Fed?

By: Joseph Stiglitz – November 3, 2017

Project Syndicate

NEW YORK – One of the important powers of any US president is to appoint members and heads of the many agencies that are responsible for implementing the country’s laws and regulations and, in many cases, governing the economy. Perhaps no institution is more important in that regard than the Federal Reserve.

In exercising that power, Donald Trump has broken a long-standing pattern, going back almost a half-century, whereby the president reappoints (on a non-partisan basis) the incumbent Fed chair, if he or she has been seen to be doing a good job. Probably no chair has done a better job, in a particularly difficult moment, than Janet Yellen.

Whereas her two immediate predecessors greatly tarnished the Fed’s reputation by looking the other way as massive risk was accumulating – and massive fraud occurring – within the financial sector, Yellen restored the Fed’s reputation. Her calm and balanced hand nurtured broad consensus among a Federal Reserve Board characterized by divergent economic philosophies, and she navigated the economy through a slow recovery in a period when fiscal policy was unnecessarily constrained, as duplicitous Republicans hyped the dangers of deficits. The Republicans’ shallow commitment to fiscal rectitude is now being exposed as they advocate massive tax cuts for corporations and billionaires that will add one and half trillion dollars to the deficit over the next decade.

To be fair, Trump chose a moderate, when many in his party were pushing for an extremist. Trump, never shy about conflicts of interest, has an uncanny ability to embrace economic policies, such as the proposed tax cuts, that benefit him personally. He realized that an extremist would raise interest rates – any real-estate developer’s worst nightmare.

Trump broke with precedent in another way: he chose a non-economist. The Fed will face great challenges in the next five years, as it reverts to more normal policies. Higher interest rates could give rise to market turmoil, as asset prices undergo a significant “correction.” And many are expecting a major downturn in the next five years; otherwise, the economy would have experienced an almost unheard-of decade-and-a-half expansion. While the Fed’s tool kit has been greatly expanded in the last decade, the Fed’s low interest rates and huge balance sheet – and the possibly massive increase in debt, should Trump get his tax cuts – would challenge even the best-trained economist.

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